


Rise from perdition, righteous man

by inkstainedknitter



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels are Dicks, Episode: s04e16 On the Head of a Pin, F/F, Female Dean Winchester, Gen, Post-Hell Dean, Queer Character, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 11:45:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3528194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkstainedknitter/pseuds/inkstainedknitter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s something a little bit funny about her being the righteous man. When she closes her eyes, she still sees hell like she never left, like maybe this is just a figment of Alistair’s imagination, like maybe she’ll never wake up again. She used to know who she was, but she doesn't know how to be the righteous man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rise from perdition, righteous man

When Dean wakes up and there is nothing but darkness and silence and the smell of earth and wood, she thinks maybe it’s another trick of Alistair’s. Thinks that she fucked up. Thinks that she’s the one back on the rack and any minute now Alistair will come and start carving her bit by bit. Any minute now, she’ll be wrapped up in chains and the screaming will start again and she’ll try so hard to get off the rack Alistair won’t even need to ask, she’ll be begging to have the razor in her hands. She scrabbles for the lighter in her pocket, presses her hands against the lid of the pine box she’s trapped in, wants to scream when dirt falls on her face but her voice is a hoarse whisper.

Something pulled her out of the pit, she thinks, as she pulls herself out of her grave. She sits on the ground, takes big, gasping breaths of air, and relishes it. Whatever pulled her out had serious mojo, the fallen trees around her a testament to the sheer power, but for a moment she sits there and breathes clean air for the first time in forty years.

She got out. Everything else can wait for a moment. 

When Bobby asks her what she remembers, she doesn’t have to think about it. She lies. As far as Bobby is concerned, all she remembers is being a hell hound’s chew toy and then waking up in the coffin and digging herself out of her grave. He doesn’t need to know about the years of hell, or what she did to survive. No one needs to know that. Given the number of empty alcohol bottles littering his house to begin with, she’s not sure his liver could take it if she told him anything about hell.

After a shower and a change of clothes, Dean grabs a half empty bottle of whiskey from Bobby’s counter and settles down to track Sam down. She will hunt him and she will find him and she will hug him -- _and then she will kill him_. Whatever that stupid, _stupid_ brother of hers did, it’s not good. there’s no way in -- no way that she got pulled out for anything less than a deal, and she refuses to believe that her finding him so close to where she clawed her way out is a coincidence.

When Dean and Bobby get to Sam’s hotel room, she ignores the woman who opens the door and hugs Sam tight and doesn’t let go until she has to. She gives Sam the same answer she gave Bobby when he asks what she remembers of hell. She doesn’t think she has words yet, even if she wanted to talk about the pit.

Sam tells her he didn’t make a deal and it scares her more than she thought it would, because if Sam didn’t pull her out, who did?

 

* * *

 

 _There is no such thing as angels_. Dean has clung to this for so long, because if there are angels, there’s a God. If there’s a God, he’s just another deadbeat dad, and Dean’s had enough of those. and yet Castiel stands before her, claiming to have raised her from perdition and threatening to send her back.

There’s something a little bit funny about her being the righteous man. When she closes her eyes, she still sees hell like she never left, like maybe this is just a figment of Alistair’s imagination, like maybe she’ll never wake up again. She used to know who she was, but she doesn't know how to be the righteous man. 

Pamela makes her feel the closest to alive she’s felt since the pit. Dean drove to Pamela’s one night after a long hunt after the whole Castiel-burned-her-eyes-out incident, all ready to apologize for all the shit dean pulled her into. Pamela didn’t let her get more than a word or two of her apology out before pulling her into the house. Pamela got it. Was loud and vocal and tells Dean exactly where and how she wants her, doesn’t push Dean’s boundaries more than Dean lets her. Dean cooks breakfast in the morning, ignoring the clock and the voice in her head yelling at her to stop this before everything falls apart.

She laughs at Sam’s face when Pamela talks about his ass. She doesn’t need to hear about her brother’s ass, but the look on his face and the idea that of the two of them, she’s the one allowed in Pamela's bed, makes it worth the mental image Pamela's words give her.

The funeral is hell. Dean is so fucking tired of burying friends, and it’s her fault Pamela got dragged into everything. The headache Dean had on the way up to the funeral has turned into a migraine, so she sits back and lets Sam drive to the motel. It’s days like this she misses hunting alone, misses being able to pop a couple of pills and pull over to sleep it off without having to justify it to anyone. Not that she could sleep anyway, hell still present in her nightmares and Sam’s driving and talking about ruby like Dean even gives a shit anymore, but she wishes she could.

She’s so fucking grateful when they make it back to the motel, the lines on the road are starting to shimmer and twist in ways dean swears they weren’t doing before, and the pounding in her head is only getting worse. All she wants to do is take off her binder, crawl into bed, and sleep until she stops wanting to shoot her brains out.  

There are angels in their fucking motel room.

There are fucking angels in their fucking motel room. At this point, Dean’s just proud of the fact that she’s still upright and not throwing up and that she hasn’t punched anything yet. If junkless sticks around, she may just get to punch something. She’d probably get smited for it, or whatever angels do, but hell, it’d be a decent end to a shit day. She’ll risk it.

“Hey, you remember Pamela, right, Cas?” Dean spits out, keeping her eyes on Uriel. “You burned her eyes out.”

“Angels are dying --” Uriel starts to say, but Dean raises a hand to stop him.

“I don’t care.” She’s tired and she wants five fucking minutes where she isn’t needed. She doesn’t have the energy to care.

“You should.” Uriel’s voice fills the room, and Dean doesn’t like the way he’s looking at her, like she’s small and insignificant. “Several of our garrison are dead.”

“Everyone’s dying these days.” Dean snaps. Sam steps forward, to hold her back, or maybe to have her back against the angels, she’s not sure where he stands anymore. Cas looks uncomfortable behind Uriel, opens his mouth like he’s about to speak when Uriel says.

“We raised you out of hell for our purposes, and we will toss you back if you stop being useful.”

Dean goes cold and numb but keeps talking. “What purpose? Saving the world? Yeah, that’s going real well, isn’t it?”

“Someone is killing angels.” Sam finally speaks up. “Demons?” He asks, looking from Dean to Uriel.

“We have Alistair.”

Dean doesn’t look at Sam or cas, keeps her voice as low and steady as she can. “Don’t know what you’d need me for, then.”

“He is... _uncooperative_.”

“He’s --

Uriel smiles, looking her up and down. “That’s why we came to his student.”

“No.” She says, shaking her head. She doesn’t want to see Sam’s reaction, doesn’t need the disgust on his face. “Cas, Cas you can’t ask me to do this.”

Uriel laughs, raising a hand. “Who said anything about asking?”

* * *

 

She wants to get on her knees, but Dean Winchester does not beg, does not pray, does not plead. “You send me in there,” she says, looking Cas in the eyes. “You will not like what walks out.”

In hell, she kept her razor on her at every moment, stripping souls down with it and her hands for years. Here, she has a cart of tools--knives, needles, salt, holy water--everything the angels think she’ll need to pull a name out of Alistair. She almost misses the razor, the simplicity of hell. She wants to walk away, but she walks in instead.

Alistair starts singing the moment he realises the angels have sent her and the box of tricks he taught her instead of getting their own hands dirty. “Heaven. I’m in heaven and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak.” He laughs when she pulls the cover off her table of instruments, _mocks her_.

Alistair stripped her bare in hell. Took away all the layers of armor and then tore her apart and carved what was left in his own image.

There’s a razor in her box of tricks. Dean has to be careful, can only go so deep, can only push so hard, but she will carve him into her own image. 

Cas won’t like what comes swaggering out in her place. She spent years torturing souls and _she liked it_. She spent even longer on the rack dreaming of what she could do in this moment, and she got damn creative.

Dean Winchester won’t be walking out of this. She’s not sure what will.

* * *

 

“What, you think I’ll look at all your shiny toys and spill my guts?” He taunts.

She smiles, fingers itching for a razor. “Oh, you'll spill your guts one way or another, I was just hoping to spare my shoes.”

* * *

 

“It was supposed to be your father.”

Alistair still hasn’t lost his smugness, covered in blood and holy water, spitting salt at her. 

“But you broke.” Dean picks up the needle again, closing her eyes. “Daddy’s little bitch broke in 30.”

“That’s a lie.”

* * *

 

She wakes up in the hospital to Sam sitting by her bedside, strung out on demon blood like he thinks she can’t see it, like he thinks that after watching what he did she doesn’t know, and somehow that hurts more than her head. Everything hurts, though,  and she started _the fucking apocalypse_ so all she wants to do is curl up at the bottom of a bottle of jack daniels and die. She orders Sam out of the room, doesn’t want him seeing her like this, doesn’t have the energy to fight. When she wakes up again, Cas is sitting at her friggin’ bedside looking all the worse for wear.

“Is it true?” Dean asks, voice hoarse. Cas looks at her, and she stares back. “Did I break the first seal? Did i start all this?” She's still hoping that it was a lie, just like when Alistair presented Sammy on the rack to her and said "Have fun."

“Yes.”  Cas doesn’t hesitate, just sits there staring at her. “We laid siege to hell, fought to get to you before you--”

“Jump started the apocalypse?” Her voice breaks, and she turns away. 

She can hear the exhaustion in Cas's voice. “We were too late.”

“Why didn’t you just leave me there, then?" Dean would've. 

“It’s not blame that falls on you, Dean.”

It feels like it. It’s a heavy weight in her gut, a hand twisting her lungs until she can barely breath.

“It’s fate.” He says, as if that's all there is to it. “And the righteous man who begins it is the only one who can finish it. _You_ have to finish it.”

“Lucifer? The apocalypse? _What does that mean_?”

Cas turns away, and she snaps. “Hey, don’t you go disappearing on me, you son of a bitch!" It hurts to raise her voice, but she refuses to let him walk out on her. "What does that mean?” 

“I don’t know.” Cas won’t meet her eyes.

“Bull!”

“I don’t.” He finally turns to look at her. “Dean, they don’t tell me much. I just know how our fate rests with you."

“Well then, you guys are screwed. I can’t do it, Cas. it’s too big." It's too big, she can feel it swallowing her whole, drowning her. Look at how badly she's fucked up everything else in her life.  "Alistair was right -- I’m not all here." She came close, Alistair was also right when he said he'd try to make her whole again, but it wasn't enough. It feels like part of her is still in the Pit, the part that was John Winchester's makeshift son. "I’m not -- I’m not strong enough."

Cas just looks at her. 

“Well,” She says, turning away so she doesn't have to meet Cas's gaze, trying hard not to cry. “I guess I’m not the man either of our dads wanted me to be.” He doesn't say anything to that. 

She gets released from the hospital, wraps herself in the comfort of plaid and leather, fresh buzz cut in a motel bathroom halfway to nowhere and the look on Sam’s face when she flirts with the waitress at the diner. She is so tired. it would be so easy to swallow her gun --

She keeps driving.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Fem!Dean Winchester, queer and butch and queen of my heart, okay? This episode gives me a lot of feelings and I wanted to start exploring Fem!Dean.


End file.
